


Resolutions

by pirategirljack



Series: Weekly Fic Project 2017 [7]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Romance, obligatory episode tags for resolutions, still pissed they never happened for real, visited by a ghost ship, weekly fic project 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 17:07:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10167761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: So I got visited by a ghost ship in the middle of the night last week and wrote this on my phone with no glasses on after watching the shippiest episode ever, because back in the day when I'd last seen it, I wasn't yet writing fic. Total wish fulfillment that I think everyone ever has written already, but what evs.





	

They stood, their hands still joined, but once they were facing each other, she shifted so that his hand was still wrapped around hers, but hers was flat on his chest over his heart. It's not something she'd never done before--Janeway was a demonstrative sort--but she'd never looked at him like this before. He flattened her hand more firmly over his heart in case this was all he ever got, and raised his other hand to touch her cheek, to smooth away her tears.

He'd never dared to touch her like that before. She'd cried before, but it had never been his place to offer the full comfort he'd wanted to. Here, though...here, things were different, and this was like a new first day.

This was the first day when they were just them.

He wanted to kiss her. He'd often wanted to kiss her, but now that he felt like he could, he found himself holding back. There was something beautiful and trembling in this moment, and he wanted it to last forever. She did, too, his big warm hand on her cheek, his fingertips slowly easing into her hair.

“Chakotay,” she breathed, and she let her walls down, all at once. She was the one who took that last step and folded herself into his arms, her ear searching for his heartbeat. “I never thought I could be this happy stranded here,” she said, “without a ship, without a crew or a mission. I thought I'd go insane with inactivity. But I found you.”

She looked up into his eyes, and he smiled back at her. “I've always been here,” he said. 

“Waiting for me to notice?”

“Never daring to hope you would.”

“So you're as surprised as I am?”

“Yes. Maybe more.” And he bumped her forehead with his, their noses and chins and mouths suddenly aligning. He wanted to kiss her--but he waited.

“You're a masochist, Mr Chakotay,” she said, her lips so close to his. “Why are you torturing yourself?”

“Because it's your choice, captain, if we cross this line.”

“I'm not your captain anymore.”

“But you've always been my heart.”

And so she kissed him, and once that trembling last barrier was down, then he let himself go and wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet--and took her back to his bed.

\--  
After:

Janeway had just decided to go to Chakotay’s quarters when, before she got to her door, it chimed. She opened it and there he was.

He took one look at her and smiled, just a little. “It looks like we had the same thought.”

“These quarters--my quarters--are bigger than I remembered. Bigger than the whole of the house we shared. I was...lonely.”

“I was feeling the same way. And I brought you something.”

He reached past the doorframe and pulled out her headboard, presenting it to her the way he had the day it was done, like a gift.

“You saved it!”

“I couldn't bring the bath, but I could bring this. Is it too late for a little carpentry?”

“My sleep cycle is still in New Earth time. I feel like it's the middle of the afternoon. Please, come in.”

Chakotay did, and busied himself for a while figuring out how to add a handmade headboard to a Federation Standard bed, which usually had nothing of the sort. Janeway sat in her chair with a cup of coffee and watched, and when he'd finished and put the tools back in the replicator, he joined her. She handed him his own cup.  
For a few moments, they were silent, just the two of them sharing space like they had for weeks, but he could feel the air filling up with all the things they weren't saying, so he did what he always did and made it easier on her. 

“I miss it,” he said.

Janeway leaned forward in her chair and he leaned with her, but she wasn't coming in for a kiss like he'd hoped, and then he hoped that his disappointment didn't show too strongly. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his, no other part of them touching.

“It wasn't enough time,” she said.

He decided to try for levity. “That's not what you said every day we were there when you were bored out of your mind and counting the hours.”

Se put both their coffees aside without moving back from him, and wrapped her small hands around his. His pulse picked up, and he tried to calm it; in the few hours they'd had to prepare for being saved, they'd agreed to step backward, to be what they had been before New Earth. But it had never been like this before.

She was so close. But there were so many lines between them that hadn't been there on the planet.

“We were happy, weren't we?”

“Happier than I've ever been,” Chakotay said, with so much honesty in those few words that a tear slipped down her cheek. He dried it with his thumb, but the intimacy only made her cry more. “I shouldn't have agreed to be your second in command,” he said, cupping her cheek, gently holding her still when she tried to rear back in indignation at that. “We had equal rank when we were thrown together. If I had known--this--could happen, I would have stayed a captain.”

She relaxed in that lopsided-smile-sad way she had, and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself into his arms and snuggling in under his chin. Exactly the way she had so many days and nights on their own private planet. He'd never have guessed how often his Unbreakable Janeway would seek comfort if he hadn't seen it himself. 

But this might be the last time, so he pulled her closer still, and held her, and tried to memorize how it felt. 

“We don't have to,” he said, very quietly so she could ignore it if she wanted, so she could pretend she hadn't heard, “give this up.”

“The crew will know.”

“They already know we’re close. The bridge crew has already seen that something has changed.”

“It'll compromise our judgement in times of crisis.”

“And wen has it ever not, even long before New Earth?”

She pulled back and looked him in the eye, and she was beautiful in the night-shift’s low lights that were designed to look like moonlight. She was struggling, her face shifting back and forth between resolve and longing, but no words came.

“Katheryn. We have a long journey ahead of us, and I can't think of a single person I would rather spend all those years with than you. As long as we have each other, no one can stop us.”

She snuggled back down but he saw the calculating look on her face before she did. “We’ll have to be discrete. And try to maintain protocol when we’re on the clock.”

“The captain is always on the clock.”

“As we both well know. It won't be a standard relationship. You won't be moving into my quarters and planning our wedding.”

He laughed, and she moved her ear to listen to it rumbling through his chest. “I had no intentions to do either. But if we get stranded in another uninhabited planet, I make no promises.”

“You would really do this? Accept scraps when we once had a feast?”

“Even scraps are better than nothing at all. Think of it as one more way to keep my promise to smooth the way.”

“Oh, Chakotay.”

And for the first night on board, they slept like they were the only people in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my weekly fic project! Feel free to leave a request and we'll see what we can do! It's a multi-fandom project; feel free to leave reqs for any of the other fandoms, too!


End file.
